Best Friend Friday No. 20: Coconut Milk and Loop

Lauren and I usually plan our weekly schedules in advance, and coming up with ideas on how to spend Best Friend Friday is no different. We caught wind that Starbucks was going to start serving coconut milk as another non-dairy milk option, so of course we needed to try our usual orders with this alternative. For several of the past holidays, we each received several Starbucks gift cards, so what better way to start out the weekend than with a warm cup of chai?

The coconut milk definitely made my chai taste completely different than what it would normally taste like with soy milk. It wasn't a bad type of different, but it wasn't great either. The sweetness of the coconut mellowed out the chai spices, so that it truly didn't even taste like a typical chai anymore. It was as if  I ordered something completely different. Lauren's drink on the other hand though was basically undrinkable. She ordered a caramel latte, and the added coconut milk, according to Lauren, made the drink taste like plastic. I despise the taste of coffee to begin with, but tried her drink anyway. Although I wouldn't go so far as to call it plastic-like, the sweetness of the coconut and caramel seemed to cancel each other out, leaving the latte having a completely straight up plain, black coffee flavor. Needless to say Lauren tossed out her drink after just a few sips. I'll stick to soy milk in my chai as well in the future, but I may substitute it with coconut milk every once in awhile. Even though we weren't ecstatic about it, I'll happily welcome any new vegan options to any restaurants.

This past weekend also happened to be Stitches West. For the past two years Lauren and I have attended this annual yarn convention in Northern California. It was awesome because it was just a two hour drive from home. Now that we're living on the East Coast, Stitches West wasn't so feasible this year. Being the big knitting fiend that she is, Lauren had been pretty devastated (seriously) about missing out on this event for the past several weeks. Also, I had been wanting to go to our local yarn store again to purchase some yarn for Lauren's super belated birthday cowl. So, we decided to do some yarn shopping of our own in honor of Stitches West. Even though we wouldn't have hundreds of options to choose from, some yarn is better than none! Loop is about a two mile walk away from our apartment, and they were having their Winter sale. Plus, Starbucks was on our way to Loop, so that was an added bonus!

I gave Lauren a budget for her cowl and let her choose whichever yarn she wanted for her 3 color cowl. She picked out Madeline Tosh Merino Light in Antler and Charcoal,  and Dream Jilly in Bitter. When we got back home that afternoon I started knitting it up, and I must admit, I'm loving it.

I wasn't planning on boring you with yet another pizza picture since there was enough other happenings to share, but let's face it. I love pizza. Always have, always will. I was looking through my Instagram photos the other night, and I'm proud to admit that I have a fair amount of pizza posts throughout my profile. No shame though. This Friday's pizza wouldn't have been the same without our usual whole wheat dough, Newman's Own marinara, cashew cheese sauce, sauteed spinach, onion, tomatoes, green bell pepper, and black olives. Delicious as always!